Dowdall chronicles history of hoops history in new self-published book: Hittin' the jumper

POLSON — Pat Dowdall developed an affinity for the Flathead Lake Community and the town of Polson from an early age.

Dowdall, whose father John Dowdall has been credited by many in helping cultivate the modern economic landscape of Polson, learned several lessons from his “civic-minded” father.

“My dad was the state bank commissioner from 1968 to 1973 and he helped put a group together in Polson,” Dowdall said. “My father was asked to be a consultant and he became president of the bank until 2002. He lived in Polson for 30 years and was mayor of Polson for a couple of years.”

Dowdall’s father also founded the First Citizens’ Bank in Polson in 1973 and started the Polson Player’s Club.

“I never lived in Polson but I spent a lot of time there and actually went back there quite a bit with my aunt when I was 11 or 12 years old,” Dowdall said. “She would rent cabins for $50 dollars a month every summer for three months when she worked at St. Joseph’s Hospital at the time.”

Pat also shared another passion with his father John prior to coming to Polson: basketball. This passion of watching his father coach in Virginia City as a 3 year old started the foundation for his inspiration of a self-published book called Hittin’ The Jumper, A 60-year Affair With Basketball.

“I was first exposed to the game when I was 3 years old and my dad’s first job was to teach and coach at Virginia City,” Pat Dowdall said. “He used to take me to practice and I would sit on the bench and go to the locker room. I just became fascinated with the game.”

Pat Dowdall’s fascination with the game grew even as his father decided to leave coaching basketball behind.

His passion would lead him on a 60-year basketball journey that became the inspiration for his book.

“I began the book at a very low point in my life,” Pat Dowdall explains. “It was the last game of my high school career in the Divisional Tournament and we were playing Deer Lodge, a team on about a 30-game losing streak. Our team had a fairly decent record and we were trying to grab one of the spots for state. We lost to Deer Lodge in our second game of the tournament. They really slowed the game down against us and I remember ending the game taking the tape off my ankle. I could have never imagined in a million years my basketball life had just begun and I would be playing the game 45 years later.”

Through his years playing at the University of Notre Dame, Harvard Law School, and his time living in New York, Boston, and Chicago, Pat Dowdall would play many years of pick up basketball games. His book chronicled all of his adventures through his journey of basketball and the friends he would forge a bond with in later years.

“I had a fairly intense job as entrepreneur in the financial area and basketball was always my escape from that financial world,” Pat Dowdall said. “No matter where I was, I would find good pick up basketball games. When I moved to Chicago and New York, I would find lawyer leagues. I played the next six years with some of those guys (in lawyers leagues) and they became great friends of mine.”

The inspiration behind Pat Dowdall’s book came when he was doing some cross training and shooting some hoops in the morning with another basketball player.

“Most of the time I had the gym to myself,” Pat Dowdall said. “I turned around and there was this guy about two years older than me who was shooting at 6:30 in the morning. Turned out he started talking about playing in a high school championship game at the Boston Garden. At that point I was about 60 years old and had met lot of interesting people and played in a lot of interesting places I thought to myself, ‘there is a book here.’ I started outlining the book in my head and found what would be the genesis of it. I immediately started to contact people in my past I knew through basketball. I contacted 100 people who I hadn’t spoken to in 50 years and I had an unbelievable experience with all of those people.”

Pat Dowdall has played against and was teammates with former Montana governor Marc Racicot, former Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez, and politician and CEO Scott Harshbarger.

“One thing I discovered in connection with doing this book is I wanted to give a historical perspective,” Dowdall said. “I tried to place it in the historical context of where I was playing (at the time) and where the game of basketball was.”

From playing basketball at Springfield College (Mass.), where the game was founded in 1892, to playing at Kareem Abdul Jabaar’s former high school basketball gym, there isn’t much Dowdall hasn’t touched.

During his experience in the senior games playing basketball, Pat Dowdall recalled watching the Oklahoma Sooner Gals play at the senior Olympic games in Houston with three girls with no subs because the other three players on their team had passed away.

“They used to have six players and one of them died, and one of them was in a nursing home,” Pat Dowdall said. “The first game they played, they were ahead 10-0. They had red and white uniforms, and I grabbed a photo of them. Just seeing players that were 80 plus years old was a real inspiration to me.”

Pat Dowdall connected with several friends over a 50-year journey he used to play basketball with. He chronicled several prominent figures he played basketball with and noted some tragedies including a friend of his who died getting off the airplane and having his head sliced off by the helicopter blades.

“It became my life and how this game impacted my life,” Pat Dowdall said. “It was fun reconnecting with all of these people who I had known all of these years and lost track of. I wrapped myself around all of these profiles and fascinating people who I played with over the years. Some had tragic endings, some were famous and some were not. You really see people in a different context when you see them on the basketball court.”